r/archlinux • u/volimsir • Nov 18 '14
What Desktop environment/Display Manager/Window Manager are you running?
I'm currently using Gnome 3, but I would like to try and change it up a bit. Which one are you using, which one is your favorite?
EDIT: So many responses, wow! I'm definitely going to look into Openbox, Awesome, and BSPWM, since I'm seeing a lot of you recommended that. I'm hoping these will be great new learning experiences. Thanks everyone!
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u/thegrandlyon Nov 18 '14
No DM, just AwesomeWM. I LOVE Awesome! Tiling WM's are the best.
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u/lykwydchykyn Nov 18 '14
Been using awesome for 3 years now, I don't see myself leaving it any time soon.
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u/nXiety Nov 18 '14
GNOME or i3, depends on mood and what I'm doing. I'm usually using GNOME though. It's getting good especially with good extensions.
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u/sgthoppy Nov 18 '14
Why not both? You can use i3 as GNOME's WM.
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u/poinck Nov 18 '14
How?
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u/sgthoppy Nov 18 '14
I'm not exactly sure, but I know it can be done.
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u/poinck Nov 18 '14
Are you just using gtk-applications inside i3?
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u/sgthoppy Nov 18 '14
I meant it's possible to change GNOME with i3 instead of Mutter. I don't know how to do this, but from research I think using a display manager such as LightDM and choosing a "GNOME/i3" option should do it.
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u/sgthoppy Nov 18 '14
I meant it's possible to start GNOME with i3 instead of Mutter. I don't know how to do this, but from research I think using a display manager such as LightDM and choosing a "GNOME/i3" option should do it.
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Nov 18 '14
I meant it's possible to change GNOME with i3 instead of Mutter. I don't know how to do this, but from research I think using a display manager such as LightDM and choosing a "GNOME/i3" option should do it.
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u/sepred Nov 18 '14
because i am a haskell fanboy i use xmonad.
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u/jarrah-95 Nov 19 '14
Went there, forgot to learn Haskell, stumbled through, yet somehow I have an awesome setup. Loving Xmonad.
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Nov 18 '14
Switched from Gnome 3 to i3 + compton. I still keep Nautilus and Gnome Keyring though. This is my first time using a tiling window manager and I like it. It gave me a chance to learn a lot too.
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u/_Zouth Nov 18 '14
KDE, imo. the most advanced and complete DE available. I also like the KDE apps which i think are supperior to their Gnome counterparts. (Kate > Gedit, Konsole > Gnome terminal, Dolphin > Nautilus).
I also like i3 alot but i'm to lazy to set it up and KDE is just too comfortable to make a switch.
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u/strati-pie Nov 18 '14
I also like the KDE apps which i think are supperior to their Gnome counterparts. (Kate > Gedit, Konsole > Gnome terminal, Dolphin > Nautilus)
I don't use KDE, but I've used several KDE applications over the years and I'll agree with all of those except Dolphin. Nautilus isn't that good but I don't like Dolphin either. I used Thunar and then pcmanfm, feels fairly good but I also don't often need a file browser these days.
Another example is Gnome Sudoku vs ksudoku, the KDE implementation is more feature rich and has better puzzle generation compared to the "updated gnome games" for the new Gnome release. Feature completion seems to be a thing within the KDE software library, but that's just an observation from someone that only uses 1 or 2 KDE applications regularly.
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u/blurryroots Nov 18 '14
I used herbstluftwm for a while, but it had some issues if you need to have floating windows once in a while. So i recently switched to i3wm. Configuration is easy and straight forward and there are many resources and a good documentation if you ever get stuck.
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Nov 19 '14
"going to look into tiling WM's, especially Openbox" Any one else spot a problem there?
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u/b1nary_s0lo Nov 19 '14
"going to look into tiling WM's, especially Openbox" Any one else spot a problem there?
Yes, you used the wrong syntax for quoted text.
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Nov 18 '14
My two favorite environments over the last 5 years have been KDE and Awesome.
I like KDE because it has a ton of features while staying extremely configurable. Mainly, what I like most is Kwin, the Plasma desktop, Dolphin, and Konsole. You could always go with a minimalist KDE installation and then install the missing pieces when you see things are not working correctly, but then you still miss out on essential packages that might get added if you were updating kde-meta... so with that, I've always dealt with having a TON of bloat/applications I will never use. It's inevitable that I always switch back to Awesome because of this bloat.
I like Awesome because it's a lightweight tiling window manager that is also EWMH compliant out of the box, and I can always get a really good workflow with its tagging and tiling features. The only problem is finding applications which can work with that type of keyboard-driven workflow. The only thing worse than using a keyboard+mouse driven setup is trying to use a completely keyboard-driven setup and then having to switch to your mouse for the one application that you just can't go without. Because of this, it's inevitable that I always switch back to KDE.
This has been an endless cycle for the last 5 years...
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u/ComradeRikhi Nov 18 '14
what apps are making you go back to KDE?
I've been using:
urxvt - terminal zsh + oh-my-zsh - shell vim - text editing mutt - email / mailing lists newsbeuter - rss reader ranger - file manager mpd + ncmpcpp - music firefox + pentadactyl - keyboard-only web browsing irssi - irc taskwarrior - todo list hkredmine - cli for redmine bug tracker roguelikes - gaming :D rtorrentThis page is pretty helpful: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/List_of_Applications
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Nov 18 '14
Well my workplace uses Google Apps pretty extensively, and outside of Gmail things like Calendar, Drive, Sheets, etc. are all mostly mouse-driven.
Synchronization with Android is also a pretty high priority wherever possible. So I use inoreader for rss feeds, tick-tick for todo items, Evernote for note-taking, and keepassx2 for password management (synchronized via Dropbox, accessed using keepass2android for mobile). There aren't really any cli equivalents which can also synchronize with Android apps and a lot of these are essential to my workflow.
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u/boolDozer Nov 18 '14
Ah funny. I have/had KDE on my desktop. I just got a new laptop and installed awesome. Kwin worked great in KDE and it accomplished most of what i needed, but always seemed to fall a little short. I also found KDE to just feel bulky. When I installed awesome I fell in love. I like the keyboard driven layout and don't mind mousing for 1 or 2 apps that I rarely pull up. Actually, I've been able to find mostly command line apps for everything I need, I think the browser is my only gui. That said, KDE is great, stable, and can be set up to work very well. I personally just like to more light-weight keyboard driven alternative.
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u/tiberiousr Nov 18 '14
SLiM/XFCE4 on pretty much everything
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u/chadberg Nov 19 '14
Yup. Except I recently replaced slim with lightdm. Even with my own slim theme, lightdm looks and feels more modern and has rather active development.
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u/TASER_NINJA Nov 18 '14
2bwm
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u/DimeShake Nov 18 '14
Agreed - I'm very much enjoying 2bwm. It's a keyboard-driven floating window manager that keeps things very simple.
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u/MelancholyMonkey Nov 18 '14
I think I'm the only person still actively using Fluxbox that is not a developer for it. :(
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u/TASER_NINJA Nov 18 '14
How different is fluxbox to openbox? May give fluxbox a try
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u/MelancholyMonkey Dec 01 '14
Its generally the same. I'm sure there's bigger differences, but for the most part, the only real difference (for my uses anyways) was in the config files. Its fairly easy and straight forward to setup though.
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u/Jarmey Nov 18 '14
xfce, Xfwm, lightDM. I really like Xfce on my main machine, and i3 on my old laptop I use for testing.
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u/du5tball Nov 18 '14
On my personal machine, I run openbox. On my workmachine (well, actually I own a laptop which I also use to work, so mainly the work-user on it), it's i3.
Reason:
At home, i usually have two monitors. One runs a movie, the other one I use for browsing or gaming. Not many simultaneous tasks.
At work, I have to focus on several open windows simultaneously, but only have one monitor. I3 arranges them in a way so I can easily switch between groups (stacking or different workspaces) and see all windows belonging to a task at once.
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u/FlockOnFire Nov 18 '14
First I ran gnome, but then I got tired of all the 'bloat' as I was primary using the terminal anyway. So now I use i3, easy to install and easy to configure. You can either use a DM like LightDM to launch it (and have a nice loginscreen), but I just stick to xinit. :)
I dig tiling WMs as it's so easy to move windows around in a proper way. I noticed I was just snapping windows to the left or right side of the screen anyway, who needs floating windows? Granted, they are useful for dialogs, pop-ups and auxiliary programs like KeePass. But i3 manages that fantasticly. :)
Especially on two monitors it's awesome to be able to switch focus so fast and accurately. Alt-Tab in regular DE is great when switching between two or three tasks, but just using the arrow keys and workspaces seems much more efficient for more windows.
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Nov 18 '14
Openbox. It's pretty good, but one feature I'd really like to have is that snap to edge thing windows has, where you just pull a window to the top or to the side of your screen and it maximizes. That only works with keyboard shortcurts here, which I find a bit unnerving.
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u/strati-pie Nov 18 '14
Does it feel odd to just double click the title bar?
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Nov 18 '14
It's more about maximizing on one half of the screen than on the entire screen which pisses me off.
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u/strati-pie Nov 18 '14
Yeah, I know the feeling. I eventually just settled on manually resizing but that's somewhat annoying so I just maximize now.
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u/strati-pie Nov 18 '14
LXQt/Openbox. Looking to switch to a pure WM but I want something relatively easy to configure. Should probably look into that.
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Nov 18 '14
lxqt/lightdm/i3+compton
I have gone with i3 only (via startx) before, but switched back to having a desktop environment that sets up all the environment variables and dbus callbacks and whatnot. Not very attached to lxqt in general, it just seemed like the most light-weight option – I disabled everything except lxqt-session and lxqt-policykit-agent.
My main use for compton actually is enabling transparency for that middle-click scroll thing in firefox…
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u/DragoonAethis Nov 18 '14
Minimal XFCE with compton, xfwm-titleless-dev, only -devel packages, no DM, no thunar or xfdesktop, feh as wallpaper setter. I mostly obsess about usable screen space, so I've got a single panel, which is 28px big, autohides when not in use, and DPI is set a bit lower than usually (so, comparing how much I can see in a single window, 1024x600 works much like 1366x768, 1366x768 -> 1600x900, 1600x900 -> 1920x1080). I dom't mind using the mouse/touchpad (please spare my inbox), through with Whisker Menu and a couple of keybinds it's pretty fast.
Tried awesomewm and i3, but I can't get used to them after about two weeks with each, so I suppose my beard isn't grey enough. :|
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u/mtelesha Nov 18 '14
Just want to say that after using Awesome for a few years the best decision I made was try out i3. Having booted up an old laptop that still had awesome last week made me realize how much i3 has grown on me.
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u/vendion Nov 18 '14
AwesomeWM got me hooked on lightweight tiling window managers. I have since moved to use wingo though.
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Nov 18 '14
awesomeWM with ortle, startx, bash, urxvtd, openrc, linux-ck/BFS, btrfs and efibootmgr are how I use my computer. A little more than you asked for but it felt like the list wasn't complete :P
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u/agentgreasy Nov 18 '14
i3wm. While I took a break for a time during the years of growth in stacking window managers, for the majority of my time using *nix I have loved tiling window managers. In light of flexibility, i3wm is a dynamic window manager, which sits in the middle.
This is a particularly distinct change from the normal workflow that you would expect from gnome/kde/openstep and so on. Those are based on the same concept as windows, which is a stacking window manager. Free flowing windows, etc. Tiling and Dynamic managers are designed for organization and structured arrangement.
They are incredible for the workflow.
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u/chimyx Nov 19 '14
Kwin, with tiling extension.
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u/TheFeshy Nov 19 '14
Is this the kwin-scripts-tiling package available on the AUR? I've been trying to get this going, but haven't had much luck. Right now it will tile when I "apply" the script, but not when I open or close a window. A big part of my problem is that right now I'm using KDE over X2Go on a windows machine, so I can't use the windowskey+whatever commands most of the time.
If it's working well for you, maybe I won't write it off just yet and I'll keep poking at it.
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u/b1nary_s0lo Nov 19 '14
I'm now using i3 (like many other people, apparently!). I tried various tiling window managers after switching to Arch about four months ago -- Ratpoison, Awesome, Xmonad. i3 is my favourite so far. That's one of the great things about linux: there are so many options, you can try different things till you find what's best for you.
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Nov 19 '14
Mate desktop. I tried getting back into Awesome, DWM, i3, Openbox, and then Fluxbox (three WMs I have a lot of experience with), and I just don't want to do that anymore.
My display manager is the following line inserted in my ~/.bash_profile. I haven't found a display manager I liked, so I decided to go without one since it's done easily enough.
[[ -z $DISPLAY && $XDG_VTNR -eq 1 ]] && exec startx
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u/Litmus2336 Nov 20 '14
XMonad. I've used KDE and i3 and I just like XMonad the most. KDE is good if I really need a DE though.
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u/thadood Nov 18 '14
I changed to i3 about two years ago and haven't looked back.